Conversations
by Sophia Hawkins
Summary: The dead do not always rest in peace and homicides can't just be left at the job at the end of the workday.
1. Chapter 1

Conversations

Author's Note: This is my first attempt at a Homicide story, after having seen a few of the first episodes, so please bear with me.

"Are you Frank Pembleton?"

His one night off and people were still asking for him. Frank opened his eyes and saw his surroundings, remembering that he had walked into an after hours diner for a cup of coffee and a quiet place to think, and it would seem he wouldn't be getting either.

He looked to where the voice had come from. There was only one other customer in the place that hour of the night: a young girl, 15 or 16, she looked like she was average height and build, she had short light wavy hair, a slightly tanned skin, and she was dressed in a white T-shirt, light blue jeans, and he noted, a pair of beat up dirty white sneakers. She didn't look like she had any business being out this hour of the night. Frank saw that before her on the table was a plate of some kind of noodles covered in white sauce with peas and a glass of milk; he guessed she was out to dinner but it was after 11 o' clock and that was late for someone of her age.

"Yes," he answered.

"_The_ Frank Pembleton who works for Baltimore Homicide?" the girl asked.

"Yes," he answered, wondering where these questions were going.

"I thought so," she replied, somewhat smugly, "I could tell…I just knew that I'd recognize you anywhere."

Frank opened his eyes wider to make sure he was awake and this wasn't a dream. He had never seen this girl before in his entire life. "Do I know you?"

"No," she answered, "But I know you."

He was tempted to tell the girl that it was late, he was tired and in no mood for mind games, but in all honesty he was too tired to even do that.

The girl started laughing…it wasn't a humorous laugh, but a knowing one. Frank had heard it many times before from smartasses who thought they knew everything, or at least enough, when in reality they knew nothing, and weren't too far away from getting their asses kicked. Now, the last thing he wanted to do was start it up with a teenaged girl, but if she started treating him like every other jackass he had to deal with, she wouldn't be treated any differently.

"Yes sir, I know you," the girl said as she turned around in her chair to get a better look at him, "You're that uppity token cop that can't stop bitching long enough to pull the stick out of your ass."

Frank felt himself get up from his table before he was aware of it. He went over to the girl and just about grabbed her as he said, "What was that?"

"You heard me," the girl said, "You're the cop nobody likes and everybody wishes would die."

"Who is everybody?" Frank wanted to know.

"Got a phone book?" the girl asked as she swallowed a forkful of her food, "It's very ironic, don't you think? You a homicide detective, and the day somebody blows your brains out, ain't nobody in the world going to give a damn about you. Oh sure, the other cops will put in the usual investigation, about a week's worth, but ain't any of them going to be sorry you're gone. Hell, I'll bet your own wife will be banging a white guy the day after she buries you."

Frank did reach out and grab her this time, he grabbed her by the neck and pulled her up to her feet.

"Oooooh you better be careful, _detective_, you're starting to act just like them whitey cops, and we all know that's the last thing you want to be like, ain't it?" the girl asked him.

"Who the _hell_ are you, kid?" Frank demanded to know as he let go of her and shoved his hands into his pockets.

"My name is Maureen Marr, and frankly detective, I've about had it with you…all your bitching and whining about how all the white cops in your precinct are all racists whether they'll admit it or not, can't stand working with a nigger…that's your own word I do believe, and you can't stop bitching about people not calling streets by their new names of some black leader or other," the girl said, "Would you bitch and moan about people forgetting the name of Martin Luther King Boulevard if it was Benjamin Rush Boulevard, or would it be okay to forget the new name then?"

"What the hell do you want with me, kid?" Frank asked.

"Personally, I'd love to see you lying in a ditch, with the word 'black' burnt all over your body," Maureen said, "African American my ass, you, Frank Pembleton, don't own a copyright or patent on putting a whole continent into your heritage, you are a black cop who makes everything of every day _about_ you being black and being stuck working with a bunch of racist white cops who don't have a clue, do you deny that?"

"I don't play a race card," Frank told her.

"Oh don't you? You go on and on about how you deserve a promotion more than anybody else and how it does _not_ have anything to do with you being black. Would it be as vital to you to mention that to everybody else you work with if you were white like them?" she asked.

"I don't know you, I never met you, how the hell do you know so much about me?" Frank wanted to know.

"Aha! You admit it!" the girl said, "As for how I know, I have my sources, and that's a privilege you can't ever break, _Mr._ Pembleton, and one more thing…_take off the damn tie!_"

The girl reached out and grabbed Frank's tie and jerked it so hard she choked him. He grabbed for her hand but not before she pulled a pair of scissors out of her back pocket and in one swift movement, severed the bottom of his tie from the rest of it.

"This was a $50 tie!" Frank told her.

"$50?" the girl repeated, and looked at the piece in her hand, "Well that's far below the monetary amount required to make vandalism a felony so it's none of my concern. Besides, this," she held up the piece she'd cut off, "Is only worth about $14 now so we'll split the difference."

"That does it!" Frank was about to go through the roof.

"What does what?"

Frank turned around to the other voice and saw the obviously tired waitress staring at him. Frank turned back around to face the girl, but when he looked, he didn't see her. He looked up and down the diner and didn't see her. The diner's front door had a bell over it so it rang whenever somebody came in or went out; it hadn't rung so he knew she hadn't gone out the front door, but then where was she? Frank turned back to the waitress and asked her, "Where'd she go?"

"Where'd who go?" the middle aged woman asked.

"The girl who was in here," Frank said. Was this woman really that stupid?

"What girl?"

What girl? Frank turned back and looked again. He went over to the table where the girl had sat. There was her plate and her glass, both empty, and money on the table. The waitress went over and pocketed the money and grumbled something about somebody forgetting to bring the dishes into the kitchen.

"Be back in a minute with your coffee," she told Frank.

As she headed back to the kitchen, Frank ran to the door and went outside and looked around. There wasn't anybody around. No sound whatsoever, no cars, no traffic coming or going, nobody…the entire block was quiet as the dead.

"Where the hell did she get to?" Frank asked himself.

* * *

Maureen Marr. Frank remembered that name the entire drive back home, and he thought about it all night as he tried to sleep. The name didn't mean anything to him, and he certainly would've remembered seeing that girl someplace before.

When he woke up the next morning and got ready for work, he started to think that maybe it had all been a dream. And if it hadn't…of course, he didn't know why the idea hadn't come to him before. Bayliss must've put her up to it. That was the only explanation…Bayliss was being a sore ass again and blaming Frank for somehow being the direct cause of it. Well…Frank's next thought was cut off as he looked at his clothes…he pulled out the tie he was going to wear that day, and found it had been cut into two pieces. He pulled out all the ties he owned and all of them had been cut in half.

Frank swore to himself that he was going to tear Bayliss a new one as soon as he saw the bastard. He got dressed and got in his car and headed for the station. It was a wonder he didn't crash as far away as his mind was from his driving. He just kept thinking about that girl, and Bayliss, and the things she had said to him last night, and _cutting his tie in half!_ If he wasn't in homicide, he would've killed her himself if he could. And if he saw her again, he just might.

He heard sirens. Looking up in the rearview mirror he saw three police cars behind him. Frank glanced back at them and then looked at the road ahead and he almost had a collision. He embedded his foot against the brake and his car screeched to a halt and he could feel the rubber peeling off from the tires beneath him.

There were about 20 cars parked crazily on the road ahead, what the hell was going on? The other police cars passed him and then stopped about 15 feet ahead of his car. Frank got out of his car and saw a bunch of people standing around and the police were ordering everybody to get back. Pembleton went on ahead and identified himself to the other cops.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"Dead body," one of the cops answered.

"Why wasn't homicide called?" Frank asked.

"Because the caller didn't know it was already dead at the time," another cop answered.

Frank walked with them over to the side of the road where there was a slew of large metal garbage cans that were all on their sides like they had been knocked over. The garbage that had been in the cans was thrown out all over the street and held together between the cans like a vile paste. One officer moved a large flattened cardboard box and one of the metal canisters and they saw the body and Frank almost had a heart attack. It was the same girl he had seen at the diner the night before. She even looked the same…well she was dressed the same. Same white T-shirt, same blue jeans, same beat up dirty white sneakers, same everything, there was no question about it, this was the same girl. This was Maureen Marr.

Dry blood stained about half of her body. Her eyes were closed which was the only dignified way about how she looked. Blood stained the side of her head though there were no visible wounds. The tips of her fingers were caked in dry blood; it looked like she had worn her nails off trying to dig out of something. There was a jagged tear in the side of her shirt and a horrible stab wound underneath the fabric. Her hands were bruised from right beneath the blood marks to just under her elbows; but Frank couldn't figure out if that kind of bruising came from her attacker or if she had been thrown up against something at the time it occurred.

"She's been dead at least a week," one of the cops said.

Frank could tell as much from looking at her…but he had seen her only last night, it wasn't possible. He didn't remember dialing the phone, he was just aware of the phone pressed against his ear as he listened to it ring, once, twice…

"Homicide, our day begins when yours ends."

Frank wanted to scream at Munch to stop being such a smartass.

"Munch, it's Pembleton."

"Where are you?" Munch asked.

"I'm at Harbor City Boulevard, I mean!" he remembered, "Martin Luther King Boulevard…" he couldn't think, "Look, just get somebody out here, you can't miss it, there's about 50 damn cars out here, a girl's been murdered…and tell Gee he'll have to assign somebody else to this case because I can't take it!"

He hung up before he could hear Munch's response. How in the hell was it possible that he had been having a conversation the night before with a girl who had been dead for a week?


	2. Chapter 2

Once Frank got into the precinct, he sat at his desk and tried to calm his nerves by lighting a cigarette. He still wasn't sure what the hell was going on but he didn't like it.

"I thought the great Frank Pembleton quit smoking 10 years ago," Maureen said as she came up behind him.

Frank let out a startled yelp as he fidgeted with his lighter and about bit his cigarette in half. He turned around and asked her, "What the hell are you doing here? You're supposed to be dead."

"I _am_ dead you moron," the girl replied.

Frank looked at her and was waiting for the punch line, but he wasn't getting it. "How can you be dead?" he asked.

"You saw my body," she said as she took a step closer to him, "My corpse, you can't tell me a person could actually survive all that."

"You were at that diner last night," Frank told her, "I talked to you."

"You were about ready to kill me, _homicide detective_," Maureen defiantly replied, "All because I talked."

"You insulted me," Frank said.

"So that's reason to kill somebody," she said.

"No…"

"But you were right at the borderline of committing the offense of assaulting a minor, because you didn't like what I had to say about you," Maureen told him.

Frank had no comeback for that and went back to his original point, "If you're dead, you can't be here."

"You never heard of ghosts?" Maureen asked.

"I…" Frank stopped what he was going to say.

"What was I thinking?" the girl asked as she got right in his face, "You don't even believe in God anymore, why would you believe in ghosts?"

"What did you say?" Frank asked.

"You heard me," Maureen replied, "You know, detective, ever since the night of my murder, I've been stuck watching over the people working in this place…I watch them at work, I watch them when they go home, and I listen to everything they say…and you…in the last week I've not heard you give so much as _thought_ to one word addressed to God…except for when you found out once again that your lovely wife is _not_ carrying another you into this world."

"I don't believe this," Frank grumbled to himself.

"Now, I know you're already delusional enough to believe that having a baby and bringing another life into this world isn't going to change _anything_, especially not your job," Maureen said as she leaned over and got right in his face.

"It won't."

"So Mary's going to raise the kid alone?" Maureen asked.

"No!"

"Well the only other option is once she's born she's going to be dumped off on a nanny because every boob and his brother, including the 3 billion people in the world who _don't_ have kids knows that when you have a baby, _everything _changes. You have to report in to work, but your kid has to go to the hospital for surgery, which do you choose?"

Frank was too rattled by the idea of having a conversation with a dead person to give an answer to that.

"The job of course, isn't that right?" Maureen asked as she headed over to the board, "Nothing can stand in the way of Frank Pembleton's almost perfect record. Nothing else is important."

"That's not true!"

"What's not true?" Munch asked.

Frank turned around and saw Munch standing behind him with a very confused look on his face.

"How long have you been here?" Frank asked.

"I just got in," he answered, "Stan and I are on a case, 89 year old grandmother got her head bashed in and her teeth were lying all around the floor of the house when we got there. So what's up with you?"

"Nothing," Frank insisted.

"Oh? You always talk to yourself?" Munch asked, "Gee wants to know why you took yourself off a case where Bayliss is the primary…primary and _only_ detective on it."

"Well Gee can just give him another partner for this one," Frank said, trying to think of a good excuse for that, "I have three open homicides I have to close."

"Yeah, all of which Bayliss is your partner on," Munch said, "What's going on?"

"Why don't you tell him, Frank?" Maureen asked as she elbowed him, "Tell him you can't take it because you're talking to the murder victim."

"Shut up," Frank got out of the corner of his mouth. Then something hit him and he turned and looked at her, "He can't see you?" he asked quietly.

"Of course he can't, Frank," Maureen told him, "Nobody here can see me, or hear me, only you can…of course, they _could_ if I wanted them to, but I don't want them to, so they won't. I like _them_, you I don't like, and I'm dead now so that means I don't have to be nice to _anybody_ that I don't want to."

"Oh will you shut up!" Frank said.

"I didn't say anything," Munch told him.

"Not you!" Frank turned back to him.

Munch looked at him for a minute and finally said, "Whatever you say, Exidor."

Frank turned and saw Munch heading back to his own desk and said, "What did you call me?"

"Nothing, Sybil," Munch answered.

"I am _not_ crazy!" Frank told him.

"Of course not," Maureen said, "You're standing here, arguing with somebody who's been dead for a whole week, perfectly normal stuff, happens every day."

Frank let out a low sigh and pressed his hands against his forehead; he could tell this was going to be a very long day.

* * *

Frank spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon trying to get his work done but found that quite impossible to do with Maureen's ghost sitting on his desk hovering over him the whole time.

"Why are you here?" Frank asked her finally.

"Unfinished business, cardinal rule of ghosts don't you know?" Maureen said.

"What unfinished business?" he asked her.

"My killer hasn't been caught," she answered, "As soon as it's found out who killed me, and he's in jail, then I can go…maybe."

A light bulb went off in Frank's head and he closed the file he was reading and looked at her, "Do you know _who_ killed you?"

"I know who killed me," Maureen said, "I know who he is, where he is, and what he is. I was conscious for most of the time he was beating and stabbing me, I can assure you, I did not go gently into the good night."

"Who killed you?" Frank asked.

"What do you care? You're off this case, remember?" Maureen reminded him.

Frank didn't care if she _was_ dead, he could've just strangled her then and there. "If you know _who_ killed you, why don't you tell Bayliss?"

"Because from what I've seen of Bayliss, I like him," Maureen insisted, "You however, I don't give a damn about. I can pester you all I want and you just have to deal with it. _You_ I'll be only too happy to tell who killed me and how, because," she grinned, "There's not a damn thing you can do about it."

"I could tell Bayliss."

"Sure, you could tell him…but do you think he'll believe that you got all the facts of the case from a dead person?" Maureen asked him, "No, Frank, you'll just have to sit and squirm knowing what happened and not being able to do anything about it, unless you can convince the big cannoli upstairs to put you back on the case, which I don't think is too likely since you took yourself off of it from the word go."

Frank looked and saw Bayliss coming into the squad room, and he sincerely hoped Tim had found something.

"Well, how's it going?" he asked.

"I'm surprised you even care," Bayliss told him, "But to answer your question, I just got back from telling a little 40 year old woman that her 17 year old daughter is never coming home…I had to tell her that her 17 year old daughter, her _only_ child, Frank, was found dumped with the garbage, stabbed and bruised and bloody. How do you _think_ it's going?"

Frank evaded the question, "Talk to the medical examiner?"

"Yeah, I talked to those people too," Tim answered.

"They find out anything we don't already know?" Munch asked as he came up to them.

"Well…Maureen Marr was stabbed not once, twice or three times but 17 times," Tim answered, "Bruising indicates she was choked, beaten, knocked against a hard surface, probably a wall, and her fingernails were pretty much ripped off. On an upside, examination found no signs of sexual assault."

"There's a small comfort," Munch commented.

"And this girl must've had a very slow digestive system because she's been dead a week but she had food in her stomach that was still only partially digested…medical examiner was able to make out that her last meal was tuna, egg noodles and peas in a white sauce."

"I know," Frank said, not really thinking about what he was doing.

"You do?" Tim and John asked.

"I know," Frank amended his previous statement, "A diner that serves that dish, we might check there and see if they saw her."

"We?" John asked with a smirk.

"You," Frank corrected himself, "You, Tim…see if anybody at the diner remembers seeing her last…last week."

"Smooth, Columbo," Maureen told him, "_Real_ smooth."

* * *

After Bayliss and Munch had left, Maureen walked around Frank and said to him, "So you're really serious about bringing a kid into the world?"

"That's none of your business," he answered.

"Frank…I've been watching all of you guys since the night I died, your business is my business," Maureen said, "And it's all ugly. Now tell me something…supposing you actually manage to conjure up any sperm to fertilize your wife's eggs…are you going to announce it from the rooftops or just…pretend the whole thing never happened until her water breaks?"

"What're you talking about?"

"Well I know you're a pretty stiff lipped person, and I'm using that term generously," Maureen told him.

"Stiff lipped."

"No, person," she replied, "If Mary gets knocked up are you going to be running around this joint passing out cigars?"

"No."

"Why?" Maureen asked, "You going to tell anybody? Giardello? Howard? Munch? Bayliss?"

Frank started laughing, "If Mary got pregnant, Bayliss would be the last person I'd tell."

"Why? Are you ashamed of your kid?" Maureen asked.

"No."

"Oh, but nobody can know about it, is that it?" Maureen asked, "Generally the things you don't talk about are the things you're ashamed of. So if you wouldn't tell anybody about your wife's pregnancy, it stands to reason it would only be because you're ashamed of the kid."

"If my wife and I have a child," Frank said, slowly, getting out every syllable of every word for her to hear clearly, "That's our business, nobody else's."

"Nobody's business?" Maureen repeated, "Frank…right now there's a little old man in a white coat rigging my corpse up on a scale to figure out my weight down to the last ounce. _That_ is nobody's business. The medical examiner is finding out what my bra size is, _that_ is nobody's business. He's finding out that at the time of my death, I was suffering from internal hemorrhoids, _that_ is nobody's business. He's finding out that I had dandruff, discolored skin on my armpits and cracked calluses on my feet, _that_ is nobody's business. All the little gory details that nobody is ever supposed to know about another person because it's none of their business, all of that is coming out for me now and the whole damn world's going to know about it, even though they got no right to. But _you_ decide to reproduce a miniature you to unleash onto the world, _that_ is everybody's business. Frank Pembleton's kid…it should be a national warning, 'disaster impending, take shelter immediately'."

* * *

"Well Frank," Giardello said as he came out of his office to see Pembleton. Frank turned around and Gee saw he wasn't wearing a tie today, "Well, I see you decided to take my advice and lose the tie."

"Uh…" how could Frank explain all of his ties had been cut up by a ghost? "Yeah…something like that."

"Frank, I'm going to ask you a question and I want an honest answer," Gee said as he sat down across from Frank, "Did you know Maureen Marr?"

"No!"

"Did you know her family?"

"No," Frank shook his head, "I never met her."

"Why did you take yourself off this case then? You were the first one at the scene," Gee reminded him.

"I…" Frank tried to think fast on that one, "I thought if Bayliss had a separate case to work on, I could get my current cases closed."

"Bull," Gee replied, "You've been closing them faster since Bayliss came on."

"So much for your snail argument," Maureen told Frank as she hovered over him.

Frank wanted nothing more than to scream at her at that time, but he knew that was not a possibility with Giardello three feet away from him, so he tried to ignore her.

"Are you really so desperate to work solo again, Frank?" Gee asked.

"You want me to explain it to him, Frank?" Maureen asked sarcastically.

That was the last thing he needed.

"If you didn't know this girl and you didn't know her family, _why_ did you take yourself off the case?" Giardello asked him again.

"Look, Gee…I've got a lot to work on right now, I'm having Martin Hayes brought in this afternoon to go in the box, I _know_ he murdered Shirley Dean, I just need to get him to confess because there's no murder weapon, there's no forensics on the case…"

"It sounds to me like I need to hand your cases over to Bayliss and let you cash in your sick days," Gee told him.

"What?"

"Frank, if you can't do the work, I'm going to have to find somebody else who can."

"That's not it at all!" Frank told him.

"Maybe not, but that's certainly what it's looking like," Giardello replied.

Frank was left sputtering to himself as Giardello went back to his office. Finally, never having been able to actually form any words, Frank just gave up on the effort.

"You think _you've_ got problems?" Maureen asked him, "You should try being dead. Every so often I have to hop back over to the morgue to make sure none of the attendants are trying to have sex with my body. Do you have any idea what that's like, Frank?" Maureen laughed, "What am I saying? Necrophilia's about the only way you can have sex."

Frank shot a deadly glare at her, "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means you're half dead already, you just don't know it," Maureen told him, "You remember nothing, you feel nothing, your senses sure as hell ain't what they used to be. You can't even smell, can you? It's not that you don't allow odors to bother you, the only way a person could stay in the same room with a burning roast for hours and not know would be if you _couldn't_ smell it. Same way you can't smell the decay and rot of a corpse in a hot room. You're only aware of the things you can hear and see, and even then you're only half aware. You're not a whole anything, except for a son of a bitch," Maureen lunged at Frank and stared down at him as she added, "Who when your time comes and you're shoveled into your grave, I doubt a single tear will be shed for you…the world and your co-workers especially will cry good riddance. And when that day comes, Frank Pembleton, I'll be right there with a nicely sharpened witch's collar to snag around your neck and drag you down to hell."

This couldn't be real. That was the only thing going through Frank's mind as he looked at Maureen through tired, half open eyes. He didn't sleep well or much last night, and it was clearly showing in these delusions he was suffering from. There were no such things as ghosts, the dead did not come back, and he was not having conversations with the spirit of a homicide victim.

"I suppose you didn't try to kill me in the diner last night either, did you?" Maureen asked him.

Now he knew he was having delusions because even if ghosts were real, which they weren't, they couldn't read minds.

"You still don't get it, do you, Frank?" she asked him, "I'm everywhere, I see everything you do, I hear everything you say, and I know everything you think, and that's not going to change until I go away, and that won't be until the guy who killed me is locked up."

"Then tell me who he is, dammit!" Frank screamed at her.

"It doesn't matter, Frank, you don't have time for that," Maureen said, "You said so yourself, you have to get ready for putting Martin Hayes in the box."

* * *

"Why did you murder Shirley Dean?" Frank asked the 25-year-old man seated at the table in the interrogation room.

This was a dance Frank knew quite well, and not just in general…he'd been pacing around this table asking the same questions to Hayes for the last half hour and the man hadn't cracked yet.

"I told you before, I don't know who that is," Martin Hayes replied.

"Don't you?" Frank said, "Well I find that hard to believe, since you lived on the floor above her at the West Side Apartment house for the past six months."

"20 other people lived in that same house," Martin said, "Any one of them could've killed her."

"20 other people all had alibis that checked out," Frank told him, "You were the only one we couldn't verify for the night of the murder."

"So I told keep time stamps of where I go, sue me," Martin said.

"I'd like more than that, I'd like to personally strap you in the electric chair for what you did to that woman," Frank said.

"You're not getting anywhere with him this way," Frank heard, and he knew the voice.

He looked over his shoulder and saw Maureen appear out of thin air. She took a step forward and said to him, "Now over in New York, their homicide cops take a bit more…drastic measure to get somebody to talk. They bring in large cups of water and force them down the guy's throat and tell him the men's room is out of order, and just before his bladder explodes he confesses whether he did it or not."

"What are you doing here?" Frank asked her, quietly, but not too quietly so Martin Hayes didn't hear.

"Who's here?" he asked as he started to turn around, "Somebody come in?"

Frank looked Maureen dead in the eyes and answered, "Nah. It's just the two of us here, Marty…you and me."

"And me," Maureen added as she slowly started to circle around Frank, "Hey Frank, you wanna get him to confess? Why don't you tell him that I'm this Shirley Dean's ghost? I can raise all sort of hellish theatrics, levitate the chair, throw things, moan and scream, the works."

Frank ignored her and leaned over Martin's shoulder, "What did you do with the knife?"

"What knife?" Martin asked.

"The one you used to try saw through the bones in her legs after you cut her up!" Frank said as he threw the crime scene photos on the table, "Now there was no noise and little blood which means you started cutting into her _after_ you killed her. Now I can understand killing her…maybe you asked her out and she wasn't interested in you…but why did you cut her up?"

"I don't know what you're talking about!" the man replied.

Maureen planted her fingertips against one of the pictures and looked at it, "Is this what you're talking about, Frank? This the girl?"

"Yes," Frank said, before he realized what he'd done.

"Yes what?" Martin Hayes asked.

"Yes," Frank quickly covered his tracks, "You _do_ know what I'm talking about."

"Hey Frank," Maureen said, "I think he's telling the truth."

"Shut up," Frank told her.

"I didn't say anything," Martin said.

"Frank…it's not him," Maureen told him as she put the picture down, "Or if it is…he didn't do that with a knife, you're chasing your tail."

"How do you know!" Frank yelled at her.

"How do I know what?" Martin asked, very confused about what was going on.

"Frank, did you even look at the damn pictures?" Maureen asked, and picked up one, "The blade cut clear into the bones in that woman's leg…see? Clear W marks, not Vs."

"What in the hell are you _babbling_ about?" Frank demanded to know.

"Frank, knives make Vs when they cut into bone, serrated ones certainly…but _saws_ make Ws," Maureen told him calmly and simply, as if she were explaining an obvious fact to a child that hadn't learned yet.

"What?" Frank asked, "How do you know that?"

"I keep telling you, I don't know _anything_!" Hayes told Frank.

"He's not your guy, Frank, call it off," Maureen said, "Call it off, Frank."

"No!"

"No? Then I will," Maureen turned to the two-way mirror that rested in the middle of the wall, "You better tell your buddies on the other side to back away or they'll be picking glass out of their heads for weeks."

"What are you talking abou-"

Frank didn't get a chance to finish his question because at that second, Maureen drove her fist into the mirror and smashed it into a million pieces, revealing a stunned Giardello, Kaye and Munch on the other side of the broken looking glass. Clearly, none of the other detectives knew what to make of this because the glass had fallen through on their side meaning something happened to it from within the box, and the only people in there were Frank and the suspect, both of whom were five feet away from the mirror when it shattered; and both of whom looked as equally puzzled and clueless as the rest did.

"It's all done with mirrors, Frank," Maureen told him as she slowly dematerialized in front of him.

"Well, Frank?" Giardello said, "Would you care to explain _this_ one?"

Frank looked at Gee and the others just dumbfounded, and not able to even think of a way to explain this one, helplessly shrugged his shoulders.


End file.
